Please join the MWPA on the opening night of the Maine Crime Wave! Doors open at 5 PM with free appetizers, a cash bar, and book signing. At 5:45 PM, we will give this year’s Maine CrimeMaster Award to NYT Best-selling writer Carla Neggers, followed by a conversation between Neggers and NYT Best-selling writer Julia Spencer-Fleming.
At 7 PM, we will host a Two Minutes in the Slammer reading. A fabulous group of Maine crime writers will each share rip-roaring two minute samples of their work. Readers will include Claire Ackroyd, John Clark, Matt Cost, Jessica Ellicot, Kate Flora, Vaughn Hardacker, Chris Holm, Sandra Neily, Barbara Ross, and Jule Selbo, as well as the winner and runners up for this years’ CrimeFlash Contest. Past winner Robert Kelley will MC the reading.
These events all take place on the 7th floor of the Glickman Family Library. Parking is available in the USM Parking Garage at 88 Bedford St.
This is a free event, and we ask that you please RSVP and save your seat by clicking on the orange button.
To register for the full Maine Crime Wave on Saturday, June 10 with panels, book signings, conversations, and more happening from 9 AM to 5 PM, please go to the Maine Crime Wave page.
Claire Ackroyd is the author of Murder in the Maple Woods, which was a finalist for a Maine Literary Award in Crime Fiction in 2021.
John Clark is a retired library director who writes fantasy and short mystery stories and is a regular poster on the Maine Crime Writers blog.
Matt Cost has owned a mystery bookstore, a video store, and a gym, before serving a ten-year sentence as a junior high school teacher. Cost has published four books in the Mainely Mystery series, with the fifth, "Mainely Wicked", due out in August of 2023. He has also published four books in the Clay Wolfe Trap series, with the fifth, "Pirate Trap", due out in December of 2023.
Agatha award nominee Jessica Ellicott lives in northern New England with her dark and mysterious husband, exuberant children and a precocious poodle named Sam. She indulges her passion for historical fiction and all things British by writing the Beryl and Edwina Mysteries. Jessica’s books have twice received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly as well as one from Library Journal. Her first novel won the Daphne du Maurier award for mystery.
Kate Flora is the author of 24 mystery and nonfiction books. Her true crimes Finding Amy and Death Dealer have been Edgar, Agatha, and Anthony finalists. Two of her Joe Burgess police procedurals won the Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction. Her latest fiction includes: Death Warmed Over, her eighth Thea Kozak mystery, and And Led Astray, her fifth Joe Burgess.
Vaughn C. Hardacker is a member of the New England Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America and International Thriller Writers. Three of his novels were finalists in the Crime Fiction category of the Maine Literary Awards. His sixth novel, the latest entry in the Dylan Thomas Thriller series, The Exchange, was published by Encircle Publications in 2020, and Encircle published Vaughn’s newest novel, Ripped Off, An Ian Connah Thriller, in January.
Chris Holm is the author of the cross-genre Collector trilogy, the Michael Hendricks thrillers, and the standalone biological thriller CHILD ZERO. His work has been selected for THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES, named a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and won a number of awards, including the 2016 Anthony Award for Best Novel.
Sandra Neily’s seriously unsupervised childhood exploring clam flats, deep forests, and secret streams grew into my Mystery In Maine series with her first award-winning novel, Deadly Trespass, and most recently, Deadly Turn. Deadly Trespass received the national Mystery Writers of America McCloy award and was named a national finalist in the Women's Fiction Writers Association "Rising Star" contest, a fiction finalist In Maine’s Literary Awards competition, and a finalist in the international Mslexia novel competition.
Barbara Ross is the author of the Maine Clambake Mysteries and the Jane Darrowfield Mysteries. Her books have been nominated for multiple Agatha Awards for Best Contemporary Novel and have won the Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction.
Jule Selbo’s 10 DAYS: A Dee Rommel Mystery received a starred Kirkus review and a place on Kirkus’ 2021 best crime/mysteries from independent publishers. It’s been nominated for a Clue and a Foreword Review Award. Three years ago, she left Hollywood where she focused on screenwriting (film and tv, including work for Disney, Lucasfilm, HBO and more) to Portland to write novels. After three historical fiction novels, she focused on her favorite genre – the crime/mystery – and has just completed the second in her series: 9 DAYS, A Dee Rommel Mystery.